Manafort Associate Has Russian Intelligence Ties, Court Document Says

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Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, last month at the federal courthouse in Washington. The filing on Monday is the first official effort by the special counsel’s team to connect Mr. Manafort to Russian intelligence.CreditCreditShawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and an associate with ties to Russian intelligence drafted an op-ed article last week about Mr. Manafort’s work for Russia-aligned interests in Ukraine, according to a court document filed Monday by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

The filing seeks tougher bail restrictions against Mr. Manafort, arguing that writing the op-ed flouts a judge’s admonition against trying to use the news media to influence the case against Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, another former campaign official.

Monday’s motion does not name the associate with whom Mr. Manafort is believed to have worked on the op-ed. It identified the person only as “a longtime Russian colleague of Manafort’s, who is currently based in Russia and assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.”

A person close to Mr. Manafort identified the associate as Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who worked for years as Mr. Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine and continued communicating with him throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr. Kilimnik was born in Ukraine when it was still a part of the Soviet Union, and he served briefly in the Russian Army as a linguist, later telling associates that he had a background with Russian intelligence. But this year, as scrutiny mounted of his work with Mr. Manafort in Ukraine, Mr. Kilimnik steadfastly denied any association with Russian intelligence. And an investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors into Mr. Kilimnik’s possible links to Russian spy agencies was closed late last year without charges.

Monday’s filing is notable because it marks the first official effort by Mr. Mueller’s team to connect Mr. Manafort to Russian intelligence. It appears to tie the case against Mr. Manafort more closely to the focus of the special counsel’s probe: connections between Russia and Mr. Trump and his associates, including whether they conspired to influence last year’s presidential election.

The United States intelligence community has concluded with “high confidence” that Russian intelligence tried to interfere in the election on behalf of Mr. Trump, and at the instruction of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Mr. Kilimnik has maintained residences in Moscow and Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and has traveled regularly between them during about a decade of working for Mr. Manafort on behalf of various Russia-aligned oligarchs and political parties.

Mr. Manafort has told associates that he does not believe that Mr. Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence. And he told The New York Times in February that he had “never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.”

But he added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”

Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik communicated regularly during the 2016 campaign, with Mr. Kilimnik traveling to the United States to meet at least twice. The pair exchanged cryptic emails last year in which they appeared to discuss how to use Mr. Manafort’s role on the Trump campaign to recoup unpaid bills from the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska.

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Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign official, last month at the federal courthouse in Washington. He pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering and lobbying violations.CreditShawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

In other emails, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik appeared to discuss arranging a private briefing about the campaign for Mr. Deripaska, who is close to Mr. Putin. The briefing did not occur.

Mr. Kilimnik did not respond to a request for comment on Monday about the effort to draft an op-ed article with Mr. Manafort.

The person close to Mr. Manafort said that the op-ed did not run, and blasted Mr. Mueller’s team for trying to limit Mr. Manafort’s First Amendment rights.

The court filing contends that the op-ed “clearly was undertaken to influence the public’s opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication.” It says that the plan was for Mr. Manafort and his associate to ghostwrite the op-ed to appear under someone else’s name, but it does not specify who, nor in what publication.

Mr. Mueller’s team indicated in the filing that it had a copy of the draft op-ed but did not want to make it public.

The special counsel flagged the op-ed effort last week for Mr. Manafort’s lawyers, who assured the prosecutors “that steps would be taken to make sure it was no longer going to be published,” according to the Monday filing.